


Fighter

by kiichu



Category: 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Angst galore, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-11
Updated: 2012-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-20 20:59:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/589580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiichu/pseuds/kiichu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years after the second Nonary Game, Hongou returns to the very first Cradle headquarters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fighter

**Author's Note:**

> For 999 Week Day 1: Ace. <3

In retrospect, perhaps it was not the best idea to come here.

The entire building's condition was lacking – to say the least. The peeling sign still bared half of its letters; broken-off glass vowels littered the unkempt grass below, not even fit to be stolen by some prankster teenagers or pawn shop thieves. Cobwebs and rust had plagued his poor headquarters beyond repair, and a few clever kids' graffiti marks were painted into the walls.

Reaching into his coat pocket, the older man fished out the small, silver key. No one would even bother to change the locks on  _this_ place, so he assumed there wouldn't be a problem entering.

As luck would have it, the key slid in without a problem. It only took a few grunts of effort to pry the decayed door open, and Gentarou Hongou stepped inside Cradle Pharmaceuticals for the first time in over fifteen years.

He heard the scuffle of some creature in the distance at the noise of his boots on the dusty floor. There was little time to ponder its identity as a few rats scrambled past his feet. Grimacing, he let them be and continued down the main hallway.

Once his trial had ended and he was serving time, Hongou knew Cradle would be closed down immediately. Enough evidence of corruptness is enough to damn any seemingly innocent business, after all. He expected the place to be demolished, or at least set on fire by a begrudged victim. No one would put it past Aoi or Akane, clad in their “Zero” gear, to return to the very place responsible for their turmoil and burn it to the ground. If he focused, Hongou could even hear Akane Kurashiki's laughter as the flames consumed his life's work.

Suppressing a shiver, the man continued to walk down the hallway, past the lounges to the elevator. Would riding a machine that hasn't operated in such a long time be wise of him? Probably not, but it wasn't as if he had anything to lose.

His finger jammed into the up arrow, rewarding him with a faint electrical light. Pleased, Hongou listened for the churning gears and cables, bringing the old elevator down for its last ride. The doors shakily opened with a screeching sound, and he stepped inside. An old poster was placed by the numbered floor buttons, advertising a company picnic on a date long gone. “Bring your friends and family!” it read, and Hongou wondered how Cradle had once been so friendly and inviting.

After the initial Nonary Project, that damned detective was sniffing around their campus like a bloodhound, forcing them to relocate. This particular headquarters had not been touched since that fateful day – Hongou's first failure. He couldn't recall handling it well; like a child, he had thrown a tantrum and almost refused to give up without a fight. In the end, it was Nijisaki who had the level head, insisting that they lick their wounds in silence and make sure to cover their tracks.

The moaning elevator snapped Hongou out of his thoughts, and he was a bit surprised as the doors wrenched open for him. Almost nodding his thanks to them, he cautiously stepped down the hallway, dodging more rats and spiders than he'd ever seen in his life. As a man of wealth, how could he have let something he once owned fall to such vermin? If only he had called an exterminator sooner...

But that was the past; it would be pointless to fix up a place as broken as this. Shaking his head, Hongou walked to Kubota's office – the first door on the left. The nervous man had left it unlocked, of course; he always was quite forgetful. However, his technology skills were unmatched – not to mention he responded just as planned to intimidation – and thus was needed for the Nonary Project.

Hongou glanced around the small room idly; pieces of discarded prototype designs littered Kubota's desk, and blueprints were still strewn up on the walls. As far as Hongou knew, Kubota wasn't close with his family, and was overall quite the introverted man; that would explain the lack of photos and personal touches around the room.

It was almost... lonely. And for the first time, Hongou wondered if Kubota was indeed lonesome; if something had happened to make him so afraid of the world. Strange, how that thought never crossed his mind when the nervous man was still alive; ironic that Hongou would choose to wonder about Kubota's life after he himself had taken it away.

He glanced down at the desk, running his hand across the smooth metal. Careful to avoid the rusting sides, he knocked on the cold material, hearing a loud echo in response. A few more rats scuttled out from underneath, causing the man to take a few steps back. There was most likely nothing of importance in the entire room, let alone an abandoned desk.

After searching through the man's drawers and cabinets, Hongou decided to move on. The only thing he found of Kubota's was a spare pair of glasses, most likely unused given that the technician was the one put in charge of the most demanding and time-consuming projects. He seldom got the chance to breathe, let alone switch out his glasses for another pair. The former CEO still recalled walking in on the man falling asleep directly on top of his blueprints. And if Hongou had reacted the way he always did to any sort of incompetency, Kubota received a docked paycheck that month.

Cradle worked its employees to the bone, and yet no one ever complained. Was it fear? Kubota wasn't the only one with anxiety issues, but Hongou had never even considered what he was doing to his workers. Come to think of it, had he ever cared about their well-being? No, all he was focused on was seeing faces – another goal inevitably ending in failure.

He was so  _confident_ back then, not caring who was hurt in the process, so long as he got what he wanted – like a  _child_ , he reflected. Were those few years in a solitary prison cell really enough to cause him to rethink everything he'd ever done in his life?

Shaken out of his thoughts by a few more rats shuffling about, Hongou continued down the hallway, into Musashidou's office. The man's room was decorated with quite a few lavishing items; rather expensive, Hongou would bet, but virtually worthless to a man like his Majority Shareholder. Musashidou was never one to place personal attachment to possessions. If something was lost or broken, he would simply buy a new one; Hongou distinctly recalled the man's wedding ring slipping down a drain pipe, and the only response he had was a chortle that it was getting old, anyway.

The greedy man was possibly one of the greatest assets Cradle had. He never failed to rake in high amounts of cash for their project, all while still keeping the company on its feet with plentiful funds. With his help, Cradle flourished; Hongou would never claim it was a mistake hiring him, at least not in terms of the company's success. Regardless of Musashidou's influence, Hongou knew he would still pursue the Nonary Project.

It would be easy to blame Musashidou for being so eager to go with the Project, or Kubota for being bullied into helping, but Hongou found he couldn't bring himself to do so. Something made him realize that the Nonary Game would have still happened regardless, because of his  _own_  ambition.

He simply didn't have the energy to shoulder the blame off himself – not this time, anyway.

After gathering a small vase (worth more than it looks, he'd bet) to take with him, he continued down the hall to the second-to-last office.

The door was still open; its owner always was a bit too inviting. A company like Cradle bred tired and nameless businessmen, but somehow, Nagisa Nijisaki managed to stand out – even to Hongou. He wasn't especially skilled at things, but had proved himself loyal to the cause. Perhaps he was simply loyal to his boss; either way, it was much too late to wonder.

“Nijisaki, you fool,” he murmured, his rasping voice sounding almost alien to him. This wasn't the voice of the confident CEO of Cradle Pharmaceuticals. No, this was someone that was unfamiliar to him. Hongou had always been certain he at least knew himself in a world of strangers, but now everything wasn't so black and white.

For example, he could argue that he was to blame for Nijisaki's death, or those children for switching his clothes with Snake's. It was an entirely gray area of thinking he wasn't used to. Science was always about facts, and anything else was fiction. There was never any middle ground.

The room certainly was the most homely of the four on the upper floor. A nameplate, unique calendar, and magazine clippings all helped bring a unique, personalized touch to the atmosphere. As Hongou approached the desk, he heard more rats squeaking and scrambling out of his way. He did, however, notice Nijisaki had placed a few mousetraps around his desk, skeletons of the vermin still lodged in their snares.

He certainly was a prepared man. Hongou still remembered having Nijisaki print him out checklists for their experiments, the names of each subject typed in a bullet-pointed format. Too bad Hongou never took his righthand man's skills seriously; perhaps it would have changed everything in the Nonary Game if he had simply placed a checkmark next to the name 'Aoi Kurashiki' in one column and 'Akane Kurashiki' in the other.

Shaking his head, Hongou next focused his attention on the surface of the desk. An ivory picture frame was placed near Nijisaki's computer monitor, housing a photograph with four faces. He guessed it was Nijisaki's family or friends outside of work, but a small part of him wished it was the four Cradle executives. Part of him wanted to be important to someone else, even if it once meant nothing, as it stemmed from “monkeys”.

Before he realized it, something dropped down onto the picture. Hongou glanced up and scanned his gaze along the old ceiling panels for a leak. When he couldn't find one, he turned his attention back to the picture, only to see a few more wet drops splash onto the glass material. Where was this liquid stemming from!?

Letting out a groan in annoyance, he lifted his arm to wipe the frame. Just as he did, he noticed a drop slip off his cheek and hit his sleeve. He was... crying.

_What?_

Gentarou Hongou didn't –  _doesn't_  – cry. No matter how many failures he'd faced, he knew crying about it was pointless. Success couldn't be achieved with regrets; at least, that's what he always believed. That was a philosophy he'd drilled into his head until he could feel little else.

Yet here he was, sobbing over a photograph that may or may not have himself in it.

And once the tears began, he couldn't bring himself to stop. His knees buckled and he crumpled down, Musashidou's vase and Kubota's glasses both shattering. Briefly, he attempted to clean them up, but withdrew his hand sharply once he felt a cut shaped along his palm.

His hands clawed at the floor as hot tears continued to trail down his cheeks without stopping; the tears of a sinner. Of a failure. Of a monster.

“D-damn,” he whispered shakily, curling his trembling lips to a smirk, “there must be a leak somewhere in this old building.” No one was around to hear him, but he felt a bit better denying his moment of weakness all the same. He wondered how Nijisaki would react to  _his_  office, of all offices, springing a water leak. The thought was amusing to Hongou, for whatever reason, as he continued to sputter and choke on his own tears in that very small room.

He didn't even wish to go any further. If Nijisaki's office was enough to reduce him to a blubbering baby, who knew how he'd react to his own workspace. He recalled cleaning it out thoroughly, but who knew what sort of triggering pieces of the past he had mistakenly left behind?

Trembling, he struggled to his feet, grasping a shard of Musashidou's vase and the frames of Kubota's glasses to take with him. Hesitantly, he grabbed Nijisaki's picture frame, as well, and exited the office. His feet took him to the elevator, down and back out the front doors.

He didn't think he could bring himself to glance at Cradle again. No matter; he was used to never looking back on things. There never was any choice but to move forward. But this time, squeezing the three items in his hands tightly, he dared to gaze back at the building. The run-down, worn building that had once shaped his life's ambitions and sealed his fate.

But no matter what conflicts came his way, Gentarou Hongou was a fighter. He was born one, faced with an incurable disease. He lost sight of himself, and now needed to fight to find it. Despite the many failures he had experienced in his lifetime, Hongou knew he'd always be stubborn enough to get back up and try again.

He owed it to his old business partners – those whose loyalty had been the final nail in their coffins – to salvage the ruins of the past and fight for a better future. 


End file.
